


Oh, Sister, When I Knock At Your Door (Don't Turn Away)

by AceQueenKing



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Family Bonding, Family Feels, Gen, House Naberrie, Missing Scene, Pregnancy, Sister-Sister Relationship, hidden pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 21:44:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15373980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: She had not seen Padmé in months, true, but she had not expected her sister to be so much the worse for wear. Her sister's face was wan; almost green, as if poisoned by their sisterly silence; rounder than Sola had ever seen it before. Indeed, a closer look at her sister showed her face a bit fuller than she'd left - along with her hips. She looked tired. Exhausted, really.Padmé waved, and it looked like she held the world upon her shoulders.





	Oh, Sister, When I Knock At Your Door (Don't Turn Away)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saiditallbefore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiditallbefore/gifts).



Sola stared at Padmé’s ship as it broke atmosphere, her children clustered around her. They were waiting; it seemed, more often, that she was always waiting for her little sister. Sola wondered when, exactly, it had become a downright holiday whenever Padmé deigned to set foot on Naboo. She couldn't place a time, exactly — some point in the last two years, when Sola was going mad trying to get Pooja into the Junior Legislator's program and trying to find something — _anything_ —  for Ryoo that would be met with more than a shrug. She'd been occupied with other things, hadn't noticed that her sister's twice-monthly trips home had turned into once-monthly and then, slowly, trickled into almost none at all.

Padmé was slowly becoming a ghost, her existence just bubbling at the edges of their once close-knit home. Sola hadn't meant for it to happen, but it had, and now meeting her sister was a bittersweet experience: happy, for the time Padmé would be there, but then dreading, already, of the long absence, full of questions neither of them seemed able to answer.

"Mom!" Pooja tugged at Sola's hand, interrupting her train of thought, while Ryoo, fiercely set on maintaining her independence, slunk behind her. "Mom! Mom!"

"Yes?" She said, not breaking eye-contact as Padmé's ship slowly set down on the landing pad. It wasn't the smoothest of Padmé's descents, which meant the Jedi protector who had so often accompanied her over the last three years was not with her today. He'd been shadowing Padmé so often over the last couple of years that Sola was surprised. She wondered, idly, if the Jedi had had to burn his personal time on it — did Jedi get vacations? Or had it merely been a long-standing assignment, one that had never ended?

It was a good thing, she supposed, that her little Jedi friend got along well with the family — and, of course, with Padme herself.

"Do you think Auntie Padmé brought presents?" Pooja tugged again, insistent; on autopilot, Sola patted her daughter’s head. Padmé had generally had a half-second hesitance in landing, but they'd been out here at least a minute or two. Had she gotten so used to a Jedi accompanying her that she'd totally forgotten how to open her own door?

"I'm sure she did," she said, twirling her younger daughter's hair. "Six is a big year, you know." Of course, knowing Padmé,  she would go overboard, half of it would be in guilt for missing Pooja’s fifth, from Ryoo’s eleventh. Had a year truly passed so fast? She frowned. That was the problem, she supposed, for all of them; their lives were all going so fast. She couldn’t remember anymore the last time she’d talked, really talked, to Padmé — had she even been a senator? She bit her lip.

"What about me?" Ryoo said, grumbling.

Sola rolled her eyes and gently ruffled Ryoo's hair, who frowned into her datapad. Sola turned to try to engage her eldest daughter in what passed for a conversation with an eleven-year-old, but her reply died on her lips as Padmé appeared in the doorway.

She had not seen Padmé in months, true, but she had not expected her sister to be so much the worse for wear. Her sister's face was wan; almost green, as if poisoned by the sisterly silence; and rounder than Sola had ever seen it before. Indeed, a closer look at her sister showed her face a bit fuller than she'd left - along with her hips. She looked tired. Exhausted, really; Padmé waved, and it looked like she held the world upon her shoulders.

And the way her normally lithe sister moved: stumbling, shuffling. She looked visibly uncomfortable, sick, and Sola's first thought was to pull every favor she'd ever earned and beg the Queen to bring Padmé home, because her job was literally killing her.

Sola had been, it seemed, more negligent than she had thought, too focused on her own children to notice her sister’s suffering. Pooja, however, did not notice Padmé's struggle to walk toward them, and ran toward her in obvious delight.

Sola jogged to keep up with her -- Ryoo, of course, stared in her datapad, unmoving. Pooja jumped at Padmé — and Sola's heart leaped in her throat. Padmé caught her — barely — and gently put her down.

"Hello, girls," Padmé said, her voice a bit breathy — this, too, made Sola's brows raise, but she swallowed the alarm, trying not to show her sister how worried she was. Perhaps it was nothing; it was not so surprising that Padmé might eat in her office most nights — she’d always been a workaholic. And Sola been a mother hen long before becoming a mother, and she had Padmé had fought about that almost as much as school.

"It is good to have you home," Sola said, throwing her discomfort into the wind and forcing herself to smile. She opened her arms but Padmé, who normally needed absolutely no opening to fall into her big sister's arms, merely nodded. Another sign of the growing gulf between them; Sola leaned forward to pat her on the back, and Padmé returned the gesture. Her hand was sweaty, odd, the grip different than Sola remembered.

"Auntie Padmé, did you bring me presents?" Pooja said, smiling wide, and Sola winced. She'd never raised the girls to be materialistic but birthdays brought out the worst in them.

"Of course," Padmé said, and then rolled her eyes, looking, for a moment, like the sister she remembered. "And Ryoo, too, though _she_ did not ask."

"Yay," said Ryoo, in an almost monotone voice that suggested aunt Padmé was no longer as interesting as chatting with her friends.

"It's good to have you home," Sola said, and though she noticed the sadness in her sister's eyes, she did not comment on it as she helped Padmé into the speeder.

* * *

 

She watched Padmé in the rearview mirror as she watched Pooja talk to Padmé about her first "job" in the Junior Legislator's program -- taking a census. Sola almost said something as Padmé's eyes began to fall, but she figured being a war-time senator was bound to make anyone exhausted.

But then again, the mother hen inside her clucked: Padmé had _never_ prized sleep over politics.

She would have to talk to her sister and made a note to do so as soon as she had a moment. She would have to take care to be coy, to not alarm or offend her sister.  But a sisterly chat was, certainly, long overdue, and Sola had no intention of letting their relationship lapse again.  

* * *

 

Padmé seemingly knew Sola had every intention of trying to talk to her, and, as such, avoided her with a charm and grace that Sola would admire were she not, in fact, the person Padmé was avoiding.

It had started after they'd arrived back at Sola's home; mother and father were there and had rushed them both in a great gust of clucking and cooing over Padmé. Darred, of course, was there too, and she was thankful he'd had enough sense to hang back -- though he, too, looked at Padmé in surprise.

"You poor dear," mother crooned as she crushed Padmé in a hug that, mostly, seemed to make Padmé feel uncomfortable. "Why, you must come home more often! You look awful."

Padmé rolled her eyes. "Thanks, mom."

"Oh, but Padmé, it's —" She pulled back and looked at her, obvious concern written on her face. Padmé's browed raised and Sola saw, oh so clearly, the same girl who had been terrified to go on stage in primary school. Older sister instincts took over.

"The travel," Sola said, grabbing their mother's hand. "You know she's a wartime senator mom, she's taxed enough as it is trying to protect the Republic. She certainly doesn't need you to berate her just because she's taking time to come see us."

Guilt trip achieved, her mother's face promptly lit up in alarm. "Oh, my dear, look at me, all gawking at you when I should be taking your bags in."

"It's ok, mom," Padmé said, trying to clutch her bags but, it seemed, too slow for their mother. Jobal had grabbed one of her bags and started hauling it. Neither of them argued as their mother carried it onward, a one-woman mission in mind to make her daughter as comfortable as possible; they all knew there was little point in stopping Jobal Naberrie from getting what she wanted. Padmé turned toward Sola as she grabbed the other bag, presumably to stop their father from grabbing it himself. _Thanks_ , she mouthed, and Sola nodded.

All in the line of duty, after all.

"We will talk later, sister," Sola whispered as Padmé passed her, and swore she saw her baby sister pale, as if it was truly something to fear.

* * *

 

After that, Padmé had put all her politicking on full display; she'd not taken her customary seat between Sola and Darred and mom and dad. Instead, she took the seat that her friend the Jedi occupied more often than not: eating with Ryoo and Pooja in the children's table, drinking from child-sized cups and begging off spiced _le'tha_ wine in favor of water.

Sola bit her lip. There was only one idea she could have that could explain such a choice, but it certainly wasn't going to be something she'd voice at the family table. And impossible, anyway; her sister would tell her of any developments in her love life.

Sola smiled all the same at the thought as she gave Padmé a double portion of shaak stew.

Padmé beamed with gratitude, then went back to asking Ryoo about her swim club. 

Sola had seen her falter only once: Ryoo had turned to her aunt after poking her food for a few moments, and had asked about their erstwhile Jedi friend. That, in itself, wasn't surprising; both Ryoo and Pooja had become quite taken with their Jedi, and he, in turn, had seemed to enjoy their company.

It was a pity that a man so clearly begging to be a father would never have children, Sola had thought the last time they’d arrived together. Anakin Skywalker had never hesitated to play all sorts of games with the girls, from odious boardgames like _Spin-the-Eopie_ to _Swimmie the Gungan_ to Sola’s personal favorite, _Overload the Pod-Engines_ , a game he’d created where he twirled the girls, one on each arm, spinning until he fell down. Even Ryoo liked him, and Ryoo liked almost no one these days.

But the question of his absence, that bog-standard question, tripped up her sister, who bit her lip, looking far too vulnerable to be her sister. She was the very image of a wounded shaak, not the mighty eel that she so often resembled.

"He's been deployed," she said, her voice catching as if she'd had to write a death notice for a Nabian soldier. "He's - he's in the outer rim. Been there a while." She tried to give Ryoo a weak smile, but even from the adult's table, Sola could tell she was oddly choked up about it.

Sola’s chest tightened as Padmé touched at the tear ducks at her eyes.

* * *

After dinner, she'd tried to ask her sister if she might do dishes with her, but Padmé had already escaped to the fresher, conveniently outsmarting her. Darred asked Padmé if she might like to join her and Darred for an aperitif in the gardens but before he'd finished half the sentence Padmé was busy helping Pooja on analyzing her data and helping form a platform on which to propose a new program for the next Junior Legislative session.

And then, several hours later, when a sleepy Pooja begged sleep, Padmé had put her to bed. And then Ryoo, as well, who offered a rare smile in response to Padmé's offer. _Later_ , she had mouthed to Sola, but then, of course, _later_ had not happened before it was bed-time for them all. Padmé had kissed her cheek and promised they would catch up tomorrow.

Sola bit her lip as she slipped underneath her covers, into Darren’s waiting arms. She couldn't quite shake the feeling that her sister was hiding something, and that settled like a stone in her stomach. She wasn't sure what hurt worse: that Padmé did not trust her with her secrets, or that Padmé had a secret so large that she did not feel she could share.

Either way, her sister must have felt awfully alone.

"You should talk to her," Darred said, sleepily stroking her hair.

"I don't know if she'd want me too," Sola said, frowning. "She has been cooking in a different oven, lately. She didn't even hug me when she came home, Darred."

"If the foundation is strong, dear, the house will hold -- providing you do your maintenance."

"Hm," She said; they said nothing more, though Darred held her tightly as his breath slowly grew heavy as he dipped into sleep. She held onto him tight but, for once, felt no comfort in the warmth of his body.

Though she heard her sister get up several times during the night, she did not go to see her -- but every time, her heart twisted in ways that broke her sleep.

* * *

 

In the morning, she heard Padmé sniffling.

She would know the sound of it anywhere, the sound she knew as well as her very own name, as her children’s cry, as Darren’s fitful snore. Padmé’s crying was quiet, half-gasped sniffles that none the less lit up every alarm in Sola’s body.

She unwound herself from Darred, who grumbled only a little as she slipped out of his arms; it was barely light yet, and she would not bother him. In bare feet, she stumbled through the short hallway that connected her room to Padmé’s – after all this time, still a room apart.

The sniffles continued, going strong; she knocked on the door. There was a muffled sound playing, a sort of recording, judging from the static and soft voices. Padmé did not answer, and she knocked softly again. “Padmé?” She tried to listen for her sister, but heard nothing but crying and the muted sounds of what sounded like a man talking. The recorded noise stopped, then started again; Sola rapped on the door.

“Padmé! Are you okay?”  
  
“I’m fine,” Padmé said, in a small voice that very much suggested she was _not_ fine. “You can go back to bed, Sola. It’s early.” Padmé’s voice was quiet and as broken as she had ever heard it; Sola steeled herself and touched her hand to the doorknob.

“Can I come in?” There was a long silence on the other end of the door and Sola bit her lip, frustrated; the walls between them that had risen, invisibly, were none the less palpable, and she couldn’t shake the sense she was intruding.

After what felt like eons but must, surely, have only been a few minutes, Padmé said, “Okay.”

And it felt, in that one word, like some of the barriers between them had lifted. Aware it may well be temporary, Sola hastily threw open the door, closing it behind her before her sister could trap her out on the other side again.

“Now, Padmé,” she said, locking the room. “What’s going…” She saw her sister, and her breath caught in her throat.

Her sister was laying in her bed, clad only in her nightgown, one Sola had seen her sister in many a time. The soft, silky shift had been Padmé’s favorite nightgown for years; it had never fit quite right, its fit far too large for her tiny, petite sister. But the shift was no longer wide and nebulous, but rather clinging to the skin — and the large bump in her belly. Padmé was with child!

Sola’s mouth opened in a startled but wide grin. “You are - ?”

Padmé nodded, almost bashful. Sola’s heart beat fast, and not even having to ford all seven of the darkest, coldest hells of Naboo’s greatest ocean could stop her from gingerly stepping into her sister’s bed, wrapping her arms around her.

“How? When?” She giggled like a schoolgirl as she slid an arm around her sister; Padmé smiled softly and grabbed Sola’s other hand, pressing it to her belly. Sola smiled, relieved — that a baby was coming was perhaps the best of all possibilities of what could be bothering her sister. She had been expecting for quite some time, she noted, feeling her so-small sister’s frame was already stretched by the child growing within her. “Oh, Padmé, why didn’t you tell…?”  
  
She looked up at her sister and frowned; Padmé wasn’t smiling. Her unoccupied hand lay on a holoprojector, and she saw in it a reflection of Padmé’s tears, which she had, somehow, forgotten in the joy of the discovery of her soon-to-be niece or nephew. She had thought the tears were only for having to keep the secret — now, she realized, there was more to it. Oh, Padmé, what had she done?  

“Tell me?” She asked, settling in. She curled in close, studying the changes in her sister’s body – force, how far along was _she_? Definitively past her first trimester, and if not past the second, dangerously close to it. Close enough that had she known she would never have let Padmé fly — but then, Padmé, of course, knew that, too. Was it simply that the child would be born out of wedlock? Sola did not have any concern for such things, nor did most of the Naboo— but she knew the Senate was far more conservative.

“Sola,” she said, voice ragged and full of so much emotion that Sola wanted nothing more than to be able to understand the story without being told, to spare her sister the pain of having to recount it. “I’ve wanted to tell you, so much but — “ 

The pieces Sola had noticed appearing over the weekend fell into place. If Padmé couldn’t tell her, there were few options: either the relationship was a secret or something truly _dire_ had happened to her sister — and her sister would have pursued justice in that case. Padmé was a warrior queen, for better or worse. If the relationship was a secret, well, that left few potential suitors.

“Is the father your Jedi?” Sola said, softly. There were few other targets she could imagine that would cause Padmé so much grief; another politician would have come home with her and claimed the child, a commoner would have been taken into their family, and anyone _truly_ dire would never have forced Padmé to keep such a secret if she had not wanted to.

Padmé bit her lip and nodded, a deep blush on her cheeks. Her thumb pressed a button on her holoprojector, and the image of Anakin Skywalker appeared. He, too, looked worse for wear; dark circles under his eyes; he was thin, wan. Even in the low resolution of the communicator, he looked like a man haunted by war. She wondered how long it had been since he had been home. The time-stamp in the corner suggested he’d recorded it in the dead of night, which made sense, she supposed.

“Padmé,” his voice rasped; he sounded weak, but she noted the way he said her sister’s name: like a prayer, like a drowning man trying desperately to cling to shore. “This will be a short message, I’m afraid. I can’t risk having the comm line occupied too long, but…”

Padmé’s breath caught as Anakin looked up in a wide, impish smile. “I miss you, so much. I’ve pressed Obi-Wan for any information from command as to when we might be back in Coruscant, but…”  A heavy exhale; inaudible in the soft speakers but visible in the Jedi’s body language. “It looks like it’s a long time coming. Even though we’re down to the rat’s end of the supplies, and there’s no one coming with more. Sorry the news is bad, you know it’s not what I would want to pass along to you.”

Padmé’s sniffled again and Sola made a soft soothing noise, pressing her sister’s head to her own.

“I miss you,” Skywalker mumbled, looking down with tender eyes that reminded her of nothing so much as Darred in their early courtship. When had this happened, Sola wondered? When had her sister crossed that final divide with her Jedi companion? Were they still in the feverish grip of a young relationship? “I feel like my other hand is gone, like I cannot breathe without you. Everything here is so brown and so ugly. Nothing _grows_. It’s hard to be away so long.” Another smile on Skywalker’s face, this one considerably more jaded. “Not that the Jedi Council would permit me to stay with you as long as I’d like if I were there.  But I miss you, more and more. When things are bad out here — “ the gesture Skywalker made suggested that, wherever in the outer rim he was, it was all bad — “I think of you, and that keeps me fighting. And I thought, maybe, I should tell you that, that you keep me going, that I miss you like crazy, that I watch your speeches constantly.” Skywalker's face was all serious; he was, so obviously, head over heels in love. 

Sola wondered but did not ask, how the Jedi and her sister found time to be together at all. Stars, did his Council know? They could not know, surely. Relationships between Jedi and non-Jedi — and having seen the way Padmé was sobbing over this, she knew this was considerably more than a simple tumble in the orchards having born fruit — were discouraged, forbidden even. Everyone knew that, including her sister.  Stars, did he have to sneak out of his temple like a teenager? Had her sister slept there, claiming protection while — _force_.

She stroked her sister’s arm as Padmé’s eyes remained on her war beau, who stood still at the console, his head down.

“I love you,” he said, not in basic but in the Naboo tongue; so, Padmé had taught him this much. It was a good choice in obscure languages; doubtful any of the Republican censors would be fluent in a language barely taught outside of high politics. The pronunciation, she had to admit, was not bad for a foreigner. “Stay strong, my morning-star.” He hesitated visibly a moment, then punched the button to send the communication; the video vanished.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment. Sola glanced back toward Padmé, who looked back at her like a lamb preparing for slaughter. It had been a massive secret, and Padmé was well aware of all of Sola's potential reactions. Sola wanted to ask why, wanted to ask a million questions, but, all too aware of how delicate her sister was, she forced herself to support her. Sola smiled and steadied herself.

“I am sorry you did not feel you could tell me this,” she whispered. “Though I can see why.”

Padmé nodded, exhaling a shaky breath. “I wanted to. So often! Especially since we…we married.”

“Married?” Sola squeaked. _Stars_. They had really done it, no plausible deniability of whose child she was bearing now.

“You remember when I asked if I could borrow your wedding dress for a day because I liked the lace and wanted to see if I could get a facsimile?” Padmé asked, her cheeks a soft pink. “Well…”  
  
The reality of what that meant hit Sola all at once: Padmé had married without her, had pledged herself to another soul eternally without a single family member present. And so long ago! Stars, that had been right after she had first met Skywalker. Padmé had kept her marriage a secret from all of them, had hidden so much of herself away and those moments were gone, would never be experienced. She would never dance with her sister at her wedding party, would never sing for her or cover her in silks or paint her face or — so many traditions, lost! But Padmé looked at her like she needed her now, and Sola forced herself once more to swallow all the things that they had lost, to focus on what she had found.

“You sly eel,” she said, gently pinching her cheek. “I wish I had been there.”

“I know. I wanted you to be there too but...We were so scared, and uncertain, and the fewer people there, the…” Padmé shrugged. Sola knew, too, what her sister left unsaid: _the less chance you would talk me out of this. The less chance we might reconsider this._

“I understand.” Wanting to change the subject to something more pleasant and supportive of her sister, she grinned. “He must be going out of his mind in happiness about _this_ , though,” she said, touching Padmé’s belly. A niece or a nephew! She could not imagine how wide Skywalker’s smile must have been when he'd been told. Now, she knew, he would have a permanent post at the children’s table, and it felt…right. Yes, whether or not the marriage was recognized by the Republic, House Naberrie would find a way to recognize the child — and their father, too, of course.

“He doesn’t know,” Padmé said, in a shallow breath. “He hasn’t been back since…” Padmé blushed, and Sola nodded, understanding. She too had been a young bride, once. “And I couldn’t tell him over the comms, we never know who is watching, and with things the way they are in the Senate, it isn’t as if I could reveal it publicly.”

Padmé still had her enemies, Sola knew. “Is there a way we could go to him, perhaps…?” Going into a war zone was crazy, granted, but marrying a Jedi was even crazier, and somehow Sola felt more confident about handling the war than she did about handling…this. Padmé was a crack shot and Sola was not so bad herself. If Padmé wanted to go into a hell-hole to meet her Jedi husband, Sola would provide her cover.  
  
Padmé shook her head. “No. I’ve read the reports. It’s too dangerous. Casualties have been…very high.” And in that, she saw, exactly, why Padmé had been sobbing her eyes out over a morning message. A long deployment made longer still on a planet that had killed other men.

“Well, he will feel very happy indeed, I assure you,” Sola said, trying to find something, _anything_ , to bring Padmé’s thoughts toward something more positive. “I can’t think of a nicer homecoming! You will be lucky if he doesn’t put a second child in you in response.”

“Sola!” Padmé gasped.

“I have been a young woman, and I know the effect domestic bliss can have on a man.” Sola snorted. “Besides, he’s _very_ pretty. You should enjoy his looks while they last. He won’t have those abs once he leaves the temple for a life of being Mr. Amidala.”

She knew, without a second of hesitation, that that was what the future held; she could not imagine Skywalker able, or wanting, to continue in his Jedi career once the child was born. Darred had barely gone back to work after either child was born, and she herself could only do so once both girls were in school. Padmé, she knew, would need support — and she trusted that if Skywalker was putting her through this much grief, he damn well was going to spend the rest of his life making up for it. Sola would remind him of this, if need be. 

“If he survives long enough to leave,” Padmé sighed. “ _If,_ Sola. It’s been six months, I — I…”

“Shh. If anyone will, a Jedi will.” This Sola believed; she had seen the Jedi clear her homeland with her sister, had seen the Jedi save her from certain death more than once. If her sister had chosen such a dangerous path in such an uncertain time, then she was glad for the Jedi. “And should the worst happen, then we will provide, Padmé. You can always come home. I will discuss it with Darred, but I doubt he will have a problem with taking your child and you in with us. We have wanted another baby in the house for a while, truth be told.”

“You make it sound so easy.” Padmé looked down, hands protectively touching her belly. “I can’t imagine living on without him, Sola, if — “

“You _will_ live, with him or without.” Sola shook her head.  It would be hard, of course, to live should her husband fall, but Sola knew well that it was possible, that they would support her no matter what. “Do not say such things, sister. You worry yourself with a future that is not yet written. Stars, you are having a baby! It’s not the time for such sorrows.”

Padmé nodded, squeezing her tightly. The words seemed to bring her some comfort, though shadows still remained on her beautiful face. “I’m glad I told you. I hated having to hide this.”

“And I am glad you told me, as well.” Sola stroked her arms as Padmé yawned; she wondered how much sleep her sister had gotten. Ryoo had kept her up all times of night in discomfort, she remembered; Pooja had been easier, but not by much. “Will you tell mother and father?”

Padmé did not answer, and Sola knew her sister well enough to understand that she thought, perhaps, that she couldn’t. Sola understood why. Ruwal would not understand why Padmé had kept her marriage a secret; Jobal would lose herself in a flurry of preparations to make-up for the grief of having lost so much time. At this point, it would be better to wait until Skywalker left the order; until, perhaps, the child was born.  But there would be a day when Padmé could tell them, and Sola would be there with her.

“We will find a way,” she said, smoothing Padmé’s hair. “We will.” If she said it often enough, it would become true.

Padmé’s breath grew deeper and she could feel her sister slipping back to sleep; poor thing, she must have been exhausted, with such a heavy secret on her. Sola settled over her, watching over her until Padmé’s breaths drew heavy and she could hear Ryoo and Pooja beginning to stir across the hall.

“Sleep well, morning-star,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to her sister’s forehead. She had to go to check on the children, but she tarried, staring at her sister’s unguarded face for a long, rare moment.

They would make it through. They had to. She would support Padmé as much as she could. She made a note to talk to Darred as soon as possible about staying on Coruscant for a few months. She knew Padmé would insist on going back to the Senate, knew too that Skywalker wasn’t likely to be home for months. It would take a month, perhaps, for Sola to disengage herself from work, but by the time her sister was in her eighth month, Sola would be there for her. She would hold Padmé’s hand, would help her deliver. Would bring her home, if need be.

Her sister needed her, and Sola Naberrie had no intentions of refusing the call.


End file.
